Trinity Sunday (Year C, 2010)

Entrance	Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty
Kyrie	Taizé Kyrie I
Gloria	Coventry Gloria (Peter Jones)
Psalm	Ps 8 (Sebastian Wolff)
Gospel Acclamation	Salisbury Alleluia (Christopher Walker)
Creed	Credo III
Preparation of the Gifts	A Hymn to the Trinity (P. I. Tchaikovsky, 1840-1893)
Sanctus, Acclamation A, Amen	German Mass (Franz Schubert, arr. Richard Proulx)
Agnus Dei	Hurd Mass (Bob Hurd)
Communion	God beyond all names (John Bell) & Benedicta sit sancta Trinitas (chant)
Postcommunion	Tibi Laus (Orlande de Lassus, c. 1532-1594)
Recessional	Holy God, we praise thy name

Trinity Sunday marks a return to the misleadingly-named Ordinary Time in the Sunday liturgical cycle (though of course strictly it resumed last Monday), and our musical fare changed accordingly. Bob Hurd’s Lamb of God goes nicely with Richard Proulx’s adaptation of Schubert’s Deutsche Messe, and Jacques Berthier’s Kyrie might have been written to precede Peter Jones’s now-venerable setting of the Gloria.

Tchaikovsky wrote four settings of the Cherubic Hymn from the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. A short hymn of five lines plus the Alleluias, it comes in the Orthodox liturgy at a point corresponding to the Preparation of the Gifts in the Roman Mass. Russian settings usually have a slow and elaborate treatment of the first four lines, and then a separate, more animated last line, with the alleluias following. We sang the English version by W.G. Rothery published in 1906, which amplifies the text to fill the verses (of Tchaikovsky’s setting No. 1 in F) with less repetition and melisma than in the Slavonic original. Rothery’s inspiration seems to have been the Te Deum, with the image of the saints and martyrs joining with the angels to sing Holy, holy, holy. Our final hymn, too, was a Te Deum, and the opening hymn painted the same picture of the angels and saints singing the Trinity’s praises.